The Heritage Foundation’s Salim Furth writes:
How Fannie Mae made its profit
Mortgage buyer and insurer Fannie Mae was in the news again this week.
The Multiplier in Action
The impact of contractionary fiscal policies, from NY Times, based on Moody’s Analytics estimates.
Guest Contribution: “Addressing China’s macroeconomic imbalances through sectorial reforms”
Today we are fortunate to have a guest contribution written Hiro Ito (Portland State U.) and Ulrich Volz (U. London SOAS and DIE). This article is based Ito and Volz (RIE, 2013).
The soaring stock market
Broad market indicators like the S&P500 have been making all-time nominal highs. What’s the significance of that for investors and the economy?
Semester’s Coda
Crowding Out Watch, Continued
The end of the semester has arrived, and as I prepared my last lecture, I checked to see how the government deficits had impacted yields. Real yields were pretty much as they were when the semester began in January.
Heritage Assesses the Ever-Expanding Ever-Centralizing Federal Government Sector
In a graphically interesting discussion of the April employment situation release, James Sherk and Salim Furth write:
R&D and benchmark revisions of GDP for Robinson Crusoe
Beginning with the third quarter of this year, the BEA plans to report the U.S. GDP and national income accounts on a new basis. One of the purposes of the change is to better reflect the importance of intellectual capital and technological innovation in the modern economy. These changes are expected to cause the reported value of GDP to be about 3% higher than when calculated under the present system. I have been thinking about how I would explain these changes to an undergraduate economics class, and this is what I came up with.
Trend and Nonlinear Cyclical Employment Dynamics
How much of the US employment shortfall is due to trend factors?
Links for 2013-05-01
Quick links to a few items I found of interest:
- The Congressional Budget Office has prepared informative slides summarizing the U.S. fiscal situation (via Business Insider)
- Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers referee the Reinhart-Rogoff debate (via Free Exchange)
- Herndon, Ash, and Pollin appear to have been using faulty data for New Zealand
- Bill McBride reviews the U.S. decline in vehicle miles driven
- China’s oil imports are down relative to this point last year (via Steven Kopits)